Jeremy Hunt suddenly worries about media plurality

Here's a lovely picture of the wonderfully impartial Jeremy Hunt having fun with Rupert Murdoch at the Olympics:

[It's from eyespymp on Twitter; don't worry, Rupert won't be upset, he loves photos shot from a distance exposing shady dalliances. His papers are full of them.)

Besides being enormous fun, what is the relevance of this photo? Well, hanging out with the boss of a company which the Met Police is considering bringing action against that company's board isn't the only thing that Hunt spent the end of the week doing.

He's also referred the Global Radio takeover of GMG Radio for an investigation.

On one level, this is as it should be - Global is taking on a few more stations and could be seen as reducing choice still further. Although, really, since Global and GCap merged, there's not been a great deal of plurality in commercial radio in the UK.

I might be being unfair to Hunt, but he was shadow culture secretary at the time Global and GCap merged, and I can't find any evidence he was exercised about that much more significant reduction of plurality in the radio world when that happened.

Indeed, Richard Eyre was the chairman of GCap who steered the merger with Global, and for his efforts Jeremy Hunt rewarded him with a position on the review into the plausibility of hyperlocal television in the UK.

So taking two large radio groups and turning them into one makes you an expert in local media plurality in Hunt's eyes, but folding a smaller radio group into a bigger one is a threat to that plurality. Somehow.

It seems even odder that Hunt - a man who we know to have been cheerleading for the UK's largest newspaper group to be given sole control over the UK's largest pay-TV operation - is suddenly worried that the changing hands of a small radio company needs to have a full investigation.

But then... the TV deal featured his chums The Murdochs. Could the detail that it's the Guardian Media Group selling the radio stations in this case be the cause of the sudden interest?

If Jeremy Hunt really believes that radio ownership is an issue, then why not prove that by holding an investigation into the industry as a whole? It's well needed, as anyone who has struggled to find out what's happening in their town using just a commercial radio station will testify.

Otherwise, this looks like just another politically-motivated piece of poor judgement from a man who makes something of a habit of such moves.

Oasis get XFM into trouble

It's a bumper Christmas special sized Ofcom complaints bulletin this month, kicking off with TalkSport's £20,000 fine for James Whale endorsing Boris Johnson for London mayor. It would have been more but Ofcom were worried that a larger fine might make it difficult for TalkSport to make the kind of programmes its known for - which, you might think, would be reason alone to fine at least into six figures.

Then, XFM gets rapped after its Scottish service broadcast a live Oasis gig at 8pm:

On reviewing a recording of the material provided by GCap Media Ltd. (“GCap”), which controls and provides compliance for the station, Ofcom noted that the programme contained the word “cunt”, as well as several instances of the word “fucking”.

XFM apologised and has bollocked the producer responsible, but did try a half-hearted defence:

GCap asked Ofcom to note, however, that listeners to Xfm Scotland expected edgier content and that very few children would be listening to the station at that time.

Why would someone seeking "edgy" content be listening to an Oasis gig?

More trouble for Global over at soon-to-be-sister station Heart, which got carried away promoting Mama Mia! The Musical at the same time as taking sponsorship money from the filmmakers:

Heart said that it is a music and entertainment station primarily targeted at women in their thirties and that it aims to provide them with interesting and relevant lifestyle features. The broadcaster believed that the launch of ‘Mamma Mia! The Movie’ was “a massive showbiz event which presented an outstanding opportunity to engage with the lives and lifestyles of [Heart’s] target audience.” It added that not only was it editorially justified for Heart to have provided extensive coverage of the event, but its audience would have expected it.

Good lord - if you were running a radio station during a commercial downturn, would you really want to portray your target market as a bunch of people whose week would be wrecked if they didn't keep getting reminded about Meryl Streep lipsynching to Super Trooper?

Ofcom asked them to tone it down in future:

In conclusion, Ofcom accepts that there was some editorial justification for references to ‘Mama Mia! The Movie’ in Heart’s programming during this period. However, in this case, the sheer volume, nature and tone of references resulted in the references appearing to be contrived and in some places, gratuitous. This resulted in the station giving undue prominence to the film and also promoting it as a product. Ofcom considered that the station output went beyond informing listeners about the recent release of a film that was likely to interest them. This resulted in breaches of the Code.

I'm not sure what the sanction will be - possibly every member of the audience has to be given a bottle of Lambrini or something.

6Music's Nemone came to grief during an interview with Doug Stanhope, who called two of Sarah Palin's children "retards":

Doug Stanhope: [Ms Palin] is a 44 year-old mother of five, two of which are retarded.

Nemone Metaxus: These are your, [laughs] obviously, your views…

Doug Stanhope: One’s got Down’s Syndrome and the other volunteered for Iraq . So that’s two retards out of five.... Oh nothing. They give me nothing, nothing but blank looks.

Nemone Metaxus: Doug this is your opinion, your opinion of what’s happening back home, so obviously, if something kicks off in America …

Doug Stanhope: For Pete’s sake, don’t stare at me like that. The woman has a baby with Down’s Syndrome; how can America get behind her when even God obviously hates her. [laughs]

Nemone Metaxus: I think we’ll leave that to you. That’s obviously what you think about I’m sure there are some….

Doug Stanhope: So that’s some of the stuff we’ve been dealing with.

The only way you could make this more unpleasant would be to suggest there was something 'edgy' about calling people with Down's "retards":

The broadcaster pointed out that BBC 6 Music is aimed at an adult audience and that Friday’s edition of Nemone in particular, regularly features guests with edgier, more adult orientated material.

What does that mean? It's okay to call people retards providing the audience is over 18? Surely the point is that this is offensive - in the thoughtless, cruel sense of the word - rather than a naughty swearword?

I think Ofcom might have issued its first ever sarcastic response in this case:

Ofcom acknowledges that BBC 6 Music attracts a predominantly adult audience and that regular listeners who are familiar with the irreverent style of its presenters and guests may not necessarily find the use of words such as “retard” offensive.

... "I mean" said Ofcom, "if people are tuning in for the George Lamb show it's not like they're going to be that sophisticated in their tastes, is it?"

Finally, perhaps in the interests of political balance, Guardian Media Group's 96.3 Rock Radio had its own jaw-dropping moment:

Donald Macleod, a Scottish music industry entrepreneur and newspaper columnist, presents a show on weekdays from 18:00 to 22:00 .

During the broadcast in question, the presenter said the following when introducing the song ‘Black Hole Sun’ by Soundgarden:

“Barack Obama’s favourite song. Your Mum’s got a big black hole, son” .

Don, in his offensive, insisted that he didn't mean this to sound racist and explained that he'd been "under some pressure within the studio". And he does seem pretty angry with himself that something so unpleasant slipped out.

Oddly, nobody seems concerned that it was also unpleasantly sexist, too. Perhaps that's something for another time.

GCap does it again. Twice.

You might have thought that being fined a million quid might have focused the minds a little at Global radio's GCap stations, but it seems not - the new owners are still contacting Ofcom with offences to be taken into consideration: the latest Ofcom bulletin details how one Mercia (soon to be Heart) presenter responded to an April technological breakdown during a competition by, erm, ringing up her neighbour to take part (the neighbour won, surprisingly); meanwhile, on Mercury (soon to be Heart), they simply made up a competition winner's name.

Presumably, though, these will be the last instances to be uncovered?

Retuning to the Global name massacre

We've had an email from James P which adds some further commentary to the renaming of most Global stations as Heart:

After dropping local daytime presenters, Global have decided to rename 29 of the local stations they bought. In a move which I believe is known as 'Breaking out the turd-polish', the stations will all be given the 'Heart' brand. This includes Chiltern Radio, which itself had only just been rebranded a few months ago (it was 'Chiltern FM' before that 'Haven't You Heard' campaign was rolled out and every station's logo was redesigned to look like a German alcopop). I remember when Channel 5 came along and a team of engineers toured certain regions, retuning people's TV sets. Presumably a similar team will soon be on hand to replace car-stickers and fuzzy bugs in the areas affected.

The article also mentions "The new Heart network of stations will retain their own breakfast and drivetime shows, but much of the rest of the content will be syndicated" - What it doesn't mention is that in some cases (including my local station's), the 'Drivetime' show has now been stretched to fill five long hours from 2-7pm. It's making for disturbing listening, with the young chap presenting clearly struggling to find enough to say. The other day I tuned in to hear him giving a running commentary of his eating of a Twix. I tuned back out on hearing the line "Ooh, there's a bit of chocolate stuck to the roof of my mouth..."

My favourite part of the [MediaGuardian] article is the bit that refers to 'the two-strong Xfm network'. I suppose technically it's a network...

Global slaughters local radio in the UK

It's been confirmed that the key result of the GCap-Global merger is the loss of most semblance of localness in local radio across vast swathes of the country - out goes Southern, Invicta, Fox and GWR along with loads of others. They're going to be rebranded Heart on the grounds that... well, there's probably a business case. It might be savings on the headed notepaper.

BRMB will be saved, as it's being flogged off.

Scottish XFM dances away

XFM in Scotland - which originally won its place on the FM airwaves as Beat 106, promising Scottish alt-rock - is to be turned into a Galaxy branded dance station after the completion of the GCap-Global merger:

In an email to staff Darren Henley, the managing director of the music brands Classic FM, Xfm and Choice FM, said the process would "take a month or two".

"In the meantime we will still be broadcasting as Xfm Scotland but inevitably our focus will move towards the launch of the new station as the weeks go by," said Henley.

"I know that there has been a lot of uncertainty and change over the past few months for everyone in Glasgow - and I really do appreciate the very professional way in which you have all carried on working so hard and your willingness to embrace change."

Although, presumably, the staff who present indie shows are now going to have to embrace the change of not actually having a job any more.

Global, of course, is thrilled at what it sees as a chance to sell more advertising - sorry, bring an experience of some sort... new... what is it, again?

The Global Radio executive director, Richard Park, said: "Central Scotland can prepare itself to receive Britain's fastest-growing radio station aimed at young people and the prospect of the output from the Glasgow studios is an exciting one."

The people in Central Scotland who already enjoy XFM, presumably, aren't important and won't be able to stand in the way of this "fast-growing station aimed at the young peoples".

More Gcap blundering

Hot on the heels of the corrupt quiz phone-in, this week Ofcom has ruled on another breach of its code, this time by Jason Donovan.

Yes, Jason Donovan, who told listeners to 37 radio stations during his networked programme that:

“It’s time for a change. It’s definitely time for a change. Boris Johnson. I have to say it. That’s my political message…”

Before even considering the political message, surely it's worth taking a moment to see, once again, the idiocy of networking local radio programmes. Apart from listeners to the London stations - and maybe some bordering the M25 - who else tunes in to their local service to hear an Australian talking about an election they can't vote in?

Ofcom have let the network off with a stiff telling off - James Whale, canned from TalkSport for exactly the same offence, might view that as a somewhat slight consequence.

What's puzzling us, though, is surely this sort of thing falls under the Representation of the People Act as well? Is Jason doubly lucky that he's not heard from the police on this one?

And why does it seem only Boris supporters feel the need to hijack the airwaves for unofficial party election messages?

GCap fiddles comeptition; gets burned

GCap must have their own entrance to Ofcom, they're carpeted there so often. After a run of misudgements and accidents - the Easter Bunny saying "motherfucker" at breakfast, that sort of thing - they've now been hit with a massive fine for cheating their audiences.

The Secret Sound contest was deliberately fudged so that contestants with the wrong answer were put on the air, so that the competition could carry on rolling along, with listeners spending their cash on the premium-rate entry line. The competition ran across the One network - which shows one of the advantages of networking 'local' programming: it allows you to rip off people right across the country with one central con, instead of having to arrange thirty smaller cons in each licence area.

Seriously, though, you wonder if networking isn't partly to blame: if the team putting together the competition lived and worked amongst their audience, they might be less keen to agree to a scheme to cheat them. Either because they'd have a stronger sense of community and responsibility, or because they know the people they anger drink in the same pubs, send their kids to the same schools and shop in the same branches of Tesco as they use. It's easy to see people as saps to be shaken hard for cash when they're not your neighbours.

GCap didn't help themselves by not being entirely helpful when their duplicity was revealed:

Ofcom added that GCap's efforts to remedy the breaches of its licence obligations were also "entirely inadequate".

"GCap was neither as full or as frank as it should have been either with Ofcom or its listeners," it concluded.

Ofcom said GCap had made matters worse by its behaviour after the incident had come to light.

The regulator said the company's internal investigation "did not appear… to have been either thorough or extensive", with no formal written report produced and GCap's board given only a "verbal report" of what had happened.

The piddling refund offered - two pounds, regardless of how much the company had taken from your pockets - also didn't go down well with the regulator.

The upshot? GCap has been fined £1.1 million quid.

There is a footnote, though: This represents twenty-five times the money GCap made from the competiton. ITV had made about fifty million from premium rate competitions during the time it wasn't playing fair - oddly, their fine wasn't one and a quarter billion.

GCap screws up... thrice

Perhaps it's all the thought of mergers and networking, but GCap radio stations seem to keep getting themselves into trouble with Ofcom. A couple of weeks ago, a slew of their stations were ticked off for failing to play the music they'd promised; this time round, Ofcom have had to consider a complaint about the surprisingly enthusiastic commentary about a car dealership on Mercia FM:

“…I’m going to get myself over to Coventry’s new Sytner Car Garage on Holyhead Road, between now and Sunday, and pick myself up a brand new BMW M3 saloon
… it’s all very sparkly. They’re unveiling this new M3. Get yourself down there before
Sunday and have a look at all the new nice shiny cars they’re showing off. We’ll be
out and about … giving out prizes, giving out leaflets, explaining what’s going to be
down there. So come and find us in and about Coventry and get down to Sytner on
the Holyhead Road… ”

GCap suggested this was just an enthusiastic young team member making a slip; Ofcom were less forgiving:

We do not believe it is reasonable to say that there was editorial justification to refer to the garage and its products in such exuberant terms simply to describe the Thunder Co-ordinator’s intended location.

More surprisingly, listeners in the West Country were surprised to hear this trail on GWR at breakfast time:

“Easter bunny here. If you laugh at my big teeth again, I’ll knock yours out. Happy f(*)cking Easter, you fatmotherf(*)cker”.

The presenters had bleeped out the vowel sounds in the words and - for some reason - thought that would be good enough.

Oddly, Ofcom seem only to be bothered about the swear words themselves, not the concept of the Easter Bunny threatening violence - which, surely, is a little extreme for a family radio programme?

Oh, and for good measure, XFM played a track with "shit" and "motherfucker" in the lyrics.

Still, at least GCap aren't as terrible as the error made by First Baltic Music Channel - another one of those overseas services which are regulated by Ofcom as they play out from the UK. Indeed, their slip was so bad, it might be the first time Ofcom has considered a complaint from another nation's media regulators, as the Lithuanian TV regulator issued an objection to this scrolling text message, which went out three times:

“To the Aryans! Happy New Year! Love, happiness and success in the New Year! From the Skinheads”

First Baltic Music's response is quite surprising:

Baltic Media Alliance said that all its programmes comply with the Code. It said that
the moderator who allowed the text message to be broadcast had checked the
wording of the message with Microsoft Word’s dictionary which stated that “Arian”
was a “follower of the ancient Greek Christian theologian Arius” and that a “skinhead”
was either a nickname or a British description for a closely-cropped hairstyle. It said that neither one of these terms breached the Code. It said that moderators have a
short time in which to check and consider any message to be broadcast and that in
instances where there is uncertainty, moderators are instructed to check the meanings of words through the Microsoft Word dictionary.

So, it was all Bill Gate's fault for not making the Microsoft Word dictionary a little more explicit about racism, then. Ofcom's judgement suggested that compliance might require a little more effort than merely hoping Word would underline racist bigotry with a squiggly purple line.

Local talent: It's the future

Last week, Richard Park was talking about the need to nurture radio talent in the regions:

"All I was ever reading from people in publications like yours [MediaGuardian] was that there is no one out there, nothing doing, we can't find any talent. Well excuse me, you're not looking." He accepts the talent production line has stuttered to a halt but insists it can be restarted. "There are people broadcasting right now in Newcastle, in Scotland, in Manchester, in Birmingham that could be very good."

Allied to that, he recommends a less cavalier, more celebratory approach to the key talent commercial radio does have.

So, we can look forward to the new Global-GCap merged stations taking an approach where grassroots talent is nurtured, given space to grow and treated like they're special?

Not quite: GCap is kicking twenty djs out the morning slot to make way for a show networked from London.

MTV in trouble again

Given the huge fine levied against MTV for constant swearing and daytime rudery, you'd at least think they're being more careful now.

Unfortunately, not so. Indeed, in the same edition of the Ofcom report which details the fine, the very next item is, erm, a slap on the wrist for MTV's Freeview service TMF:

This programme contained several instances of graphic sexual discussion, for example David Gest asked if he could use the word ‘cunnilingus’ and then gave a description of how he had performed it. There was also a conversation about penis size and the age and way in which one interviewee started "wanking". Ofcom considers that this material was inappropriate for the time of broadcast when children were likely to be watching and that it was not justified editorially.

To be honest, David Gest acting out cunnilingus is probably inappropriate for anyone with eyes.

The complaints against the programme actually were considered as part of the decision to fine MTV, and to be fair that's the reason why it appears next to the sanction report in the Ofcom bulletin.

Also in this month's round-up of regulatory fun, Ofcom returns to GCap's Ocean FM station in Southampton. Back in November, the radio company was given a yellow card because it was ignoring its licence requirement to play mainly new, adult contemporary music. Then, it was barely managing one out of every twenty tracks from the last twelve months. How is it doing now?

In its January 2008 sampling, Ofcom noted that Ocean FM was now playing a considerably higher proportion of current tracks than during the previous sampling period in October 2007. However, while there had been an improvement in January 2008, the three days of monitored output revealed that tracks from the past twelve months still accounted for less than half of the station’s music output. We could not, therefore, take the view that Ocean FM was providing the listener with “predominately” current tracks, as the Format required.

We also noted that Ocean FM was continuing to play a significant number of rock tracks that could not be considered Adult Contemporary. Such rock tracks included
Muse/Starlight; Arctic Monkeys/Fluorescent Adolescent; Foo Fighters/Long Road To Ruin; Killers/Read My Mind; The Who/Squeezebox; The Jam/That’s Entertainment.

The overall effect was to continue to give the station an older-leaning, rock-oriented
feel which we consider remained at odds with Ocean FM’s core Format promise and so reduced the overall choice available to listeners in South Hampshire.

So, that's being caught breaching the promise twice. So what are Ofcom going to do?

Um... come back in three months and sample again - having spent some time pondering the meaning of "mainly" and listening to GCap's explanation that they're tagging the music in their library with "genres" (just like on iTunes) to make sure that South Hampshi'ites have somewhere to turn without being hit by too much rock music. And if they haven't sorted it out by autumn, why... Ofcom will be really cross then.

Brian May loses Planet Rock

Putting aside his worries about Wikipedia ("anyone is free to lie"), Brian May has posted a confirmation that his consortium has lost its bid to buy Planet Rock off GCap:

Our chaps have been pressing on with GCAP's lawyers, finalising the arrangements, the principles having been agreed a few weeks ago, but, out of the blue, we heard a rumour that someone else was involved, and this morning someone 'unofficially' confirmed that rumour.

MediaGuardian reckons that an official announcement is due. May worries that the buyer might not keep the station on-air, although it's hard to imagine what they'd be buying it for if they weren't going to - it's not for the slot on DAB, that's for certain.

Hazlitt and Eyre stepping down

Architects of GCap's recent past, Fru Hazlitt and Richard Eyre, are to step down as part of the preparations for merger with Global.

In a complex piece of horse-trading - designed to placate the Office of Fair Trading who want time to properly investigate the effects of the union - the two companies are going to continue as "separate entities", with different people in charge - until the OFT rolls over and gives its approval. Not to prejudge, of course. Even with all these required management heads (way to cut costs, guys), there's no room for Eyre or Hazlitt. They're left feeling a bit like XFM daytimes.

May to rescue Rock?

The threatened-but-healthy digital radio station Planet Rock might yet have a future - apparently Brian May is pulling together some sort of rescue package to buy the network from GCap:

"I can't tell you who I am 'in league' with, but I am part of a small group of people who have great hopes that we will succeed in taking over the station, and putting it on a firm footing, for the benefit of its growing audience," May wrote on his website, www.brianmay.com.

"I regard Planet Rock as rather more than just a radio station - it is a symbol of free radio ... radio which is not run by large corporate organisations for the purpose of making tons of money, and has a free choice of what it plays."

That's how you see Planet Rock, is it, Brian? Despite it being run by a large corporate organisation and talking openly about its playlist on its website?

Xfm's respite might be temporary

Although reports yesterday suggested that GCap had decided to keep the provincial Xfm stations in its portfolio, apparently that's not the long term plan: we understand on Thursday management at the non-London branches of Xfm were told they were being kept for four months - through the festival season - before being auctioned off to the highest bidder come the autumn.

Xfm reprieved - sort of

Not that they haven't got a bloody clue what they're doing, but having put the non-London Xfm stations up for sale in February, GCap have now decided not to flog them off after all.

It's probably not actually that good news for music fans, as having seen the plans for making Galaxy a quasi-networked mush laid by GCap's new owners, it's likely that Xfm will be in for similar treatment. They'll probably be back on the market by Christmas. Or closed. Or rebranded and formatted.

GCap falls: An ever more superdense radio company forms tonight

After GWR and Capital merged, there was a lot of excitement about what this powerhouse in local radio would do.

Lose audiences, mostly, it turned out. Now, after a will-they-won't-they that made Niles and Daphne from Frasier look like bed-crashing bone-jumpers, GCap has, in turn, been swallowed up by Global. This is great news for people in London, who can now safely ignore Capital, XFM, Heart, Galaxy and LBC as they'll all be owned by the same company. Ofcom must be thrilled at having managed to maintain plurality in media ownership so effectively.

When Capital and GWR merged, the company was worth about £700million. This deal puts the value of GCap at about £375m, so any claims that the management team had managed to destory half the value of their portfolio isn't quite true.

Planet Rock may have a future

The death of Planet Rock - GCap's classic digital station - may not be quite so imminent; tucked in The Times coverage of the radio company's 'freezing' plans to flog its share of Digital One is news that they're talking with "a number of parties" who can see a future for the station.

Capital brings back the ads

Besides dumping DAB and axing XFM outside London, there's another u-turn tucked away in the official GCap statement this morning. Capital is ditching its policy of fewer adverts. Listed as a 'key initiative':

Increasing inventory at Capital 95.8 to meet demand from advertisers

Interesting. When they dropped the number of ads, GCap made much ballyhoo about how it was responding to listener needs; now, presumably, with listeners not listening much their wishes are unimportant.

Mind you, the policy of fewer adverts lasted longer than the simultaneous rebranding of the main London franchise as Capital Radio (again) - somewhere in the last couple of years it seems to have mutated again into Capital 98.5. If they can't decide what to call the bloody thing, what chance do they have of making any other ideas stick?

It's hard to believe there's much demand from advertisers for more inventory on Capital. At the end of Janaury GCap described the advertising market as "stable".

GCap axes DAB, most of XFM

Tough times at GCap, and they've just announced some tough action: the company is closing its remaining DAB-only stations, TheJazz and Planet Rock, and is going to sell its share in DigitalOne (although why it thinks it'll find a buyer for a DAB transmission network it's effectively scuttled isn't clear).

More interestingly, it's going to flog off the XFM analogue licences outside London - the Welsh, Mancunian and Scottish operations - there's little in the current reports about if the idea is to flog them as a going concern to be run as a franchise, or if the plan is for the stations to change into something else.

The statement:

"Today we are announcing a radical but realistic set of measures with the aim of delivering significant improvements to profits and operating margins and positioning GCap Media for long-term sustainable growth," said Hazlitt.

"GCap Media will become a leaner and more dynamic company focused on maximising the revenue and profit potential of five key brands on FM and broadband, the platforms that we believe consumers want and which offer the greatest growth opportunities."

A once mighty beast tamed and hunkering down for hard times ahead, in other words. Let's hope its FM brands aren't, you know, in some sort of terminal decline.

It's not good news for DAB as a commercial innovation, but since nobody listens to anything other than the BBC stations on DAB that might not matter overmuch.